What a hectic week it's been. We're in the final stages of finishing up The Political Machine. I must go on the record and say that Ubi Soft is a first class team of people to work with. Total pros. We got the game's box design in and it looks great. The game is shaping up really well too. From a pure game mechanics point of view, I think this is the best game I've ever worked on, even better than Galactic Civilizations.  It's smaller in scope by design but packs a lot of punch in game play. I'd love to turn this into a board game at some point.

We also have been working a lot on SkinStudio. Getting version 4.3 out the door has been a high priority for quite awhile. SkinStudio 4.3 is a pretty "big deal". Pity it's coming out in the middle of summer. Okay, why is it a big deal? 3 reasons: 1) It explicitly supports exporting toolbar icons and progress animations as stand alone items. WinCustomize is going to add two new sections shortly for toolbar icons and progress animations so that users will be more inclined to mix and match these components together.  We also want to encourage artists who might just want to create toolbar icons or progress animations to do just that. 2) It is the culmination of a year of effort to nail down MSStyle -> WindowBlinds conversions. This is something we knew we needed to get done before the Longhorn betas come out. Because in Longhorn, MSStyles go bye bye. There's a lot of good skinning out there that would otherwise become "legacy". Since we fully expect WindowBlinds to work on Longhorn (either as-is or in some updated version) WB users would be able to make use of all those MSStyles that are floating around out there and there would be a place for MSStyles users to go.  3) SkinStudio 4.3 has a lot more error checking. The GUI Olympics has shown us why some people still find WindowBlinds "buggy". Many skins have small errors that don't show up on most people's computers but on some computers and on some programs can cause problems. SkinStudio 4.3 should enable skinners to create more visual styles.

Speaking of the GUI Olympics, the last two events are about to be judged and what a pain it is. The icon judging is really giving the judges pain. There are really 4 icon packages in particular in which any of them could get the gold and yet one of them is going to not be in the top 3.

The big skinning story of the week has to be the announcement that Alienware is going to be bundling Stardock's Object Desktop OEM (aka "Theme Manager") on all its machines. As some may recall, recent benchmarks from UGO have shown that games run slightly faster if WindowBlinds is providing the visual styles rather than uxtheme (i.e. slightly more FPS). So as someone said, this is a match made in heaven.  MikeB, who is one of the big winners at the GUI Olympics is helping with the skin. We also structured the arrangement so that the version of WindowBlinds that comes with it includes one branded visual style and then additional ones would have to be purchased for a nominal fee (with much of that fee going to skin authors, it uses a special WindowBlinds format). What's particularly ironic about this is that this deal to open the door so that skin authors could now more easily get paid to make skins came out just as some users were trying to claim that companies like Stardock leech off skinners as if the GUI Olympics with its $15k in prizes wasn't enough of a statement of how Stardock feels about skinners.

Jeff and co are working hard on a new version of ObjectDock (freeware) and a Plus version (ObjectDock Plus!) which will have a bunch of cool new features such as system tray support, tabs, multiple docks, task grouping, Start menu, very slick edge screen docking (where only the tabs will show up until you put your mouse there), mouse activation, slick dragging and dropping, skinning, and a bunch of other stuff.  We hope to have a beta of it available this month.

The other big thing being worked on right now is ObjectBar 2 which is a totally reimagining of it. We will probably break out the right-click menu part of it and make it a separate program (still part of Object Desktop). Having the Right click be a separate program would make it more usable and make ObjectBar's UI cleaner. ObjectBar 2 itself is going to be a fundamentally different looking program to interact with. It'll be much more focused on functionality. The skinning will still be there but generally we're going to migrate more to having it just inherit the WindowBlinds skin more so that we can focus more on having it be a useful productivity program. This will also serve as the basis for ControlCenter 2. Hopefully that'll show up later this summer. Lots of work left to do. But you can see from the screenshot here that it's got a lot cleaner, simpler user interface.

There is also some talk about taking IconX out of DesktopX and making it a separate program (still part of Object Desktop). All existing owners of DesktopX would get IconX still but this way it could get more of the glory it deserves. The poll on WinCustomize demonstrates a lot of people have no idea what IconX is.  So I'll tell you, IconX is an amazing feature of DesktopX that lets users control how their desktop icons behave. It can put shadows on them, make them react to mouse events (mouse over, etc.). They can grow and shrink on the fly, be colorized, have sounds associated with events, and much more. It's just supremely cool. But it tends to get overshadowed by some of DesktopX's other cool features. Not sure what we'll end up doing or when we'd do it. But it's being talked about.  Even if you just use DesktopX for this feature, it's worth it. DesktopX's overhead is miniscule and IconX can make your desktop incredibly slick.

So tomorrow we gotta get the GUI Olympics results up. That shouldn't take too much time. SkinStudio 4.3 (the free version) is actually now available, just not announced. Shhhh.

The GUI Olympics is almost over and now we're getting down to the wire. Two events remain: Best overall icons and Best overall WindowBlinds skin. After that it's just a matter of putting together the points and announcing overall winners of the contest.

The judges have been going through the icons in GREAT detail. The link below goes to the list of icon packages that have made the finals.

The judges are still working on both the best overall WindowBlinds and best overall icon packages. It's so close and difficult to decide. But they are ready to let you know which of the icon packages are in the finalists. Stay tuned for the finalists for the WindowBlinds skins later today or early tomorrow. Final results will either show up tihs weekend or on Monday.

This year there were so many good icon packages made.  How can one pick between all these outstanding icons packages? The hard work and dedication each designer put into these is evident.  Of the dozens of icon packages submitted, we have narrowed it down to just these few for the "best overall" icon package.  There were a lot of variables that went into it.  Uniqueness, detail, quantity, OS support, etc.   But most of all, the icons had to have universal appeal. This is hard to quantify but icons that most users would tend to think are "neat" and want to try out. All those factors combined, at different ratios, are what the judges have been looking at.

Seed icons by Rokey. Very well done. Multiple resolutions, XP only, around 60 icons. Very very good use of a consistent and unique style.

 

Cardinal Blue icons . 138 icons. Works on every version of Windows. Many resolutions. Outstanding attention to detail. Support for many many skin formats. Good icon design but color usage is not optimal. Might have been better off creating a single icon package that had more colors in it rather than gray and the dominant one.

 

The Last Order icons by Rokey. 66 icons, XP only. Icons are fantastically good with a rendered look to them.  These are the type of icons one can imagine coming with some future super fantastic operating system.

 

TreeTog's PirateOS icons. 103 icons, all versions of Windows supported. Multiple resolutions. Very good use of color, very friendly style.

 

Mindless Puppet's Dementaecon.  ~100 icons, Not only do they support multple OSes but different resolutions have different icons for clarity. Most creative icon package by far.

 

Milo's D3A icons. 71 icons,  XP only. Like The Last Order have that rendered feel to them which makes them also feel like they're part of some futuristic operating system. Fantastic use of color. One other thing, 16x16 icons are redesigned which means that they don't become little smudges

This is vf's Megaton icons. 144 icons, very nicely done. XP-only. Very dark icons with red as the only color limit their universalness.

 

DanilloOC's Flooter icons. 129 icons, multiple resolutions. Very sparing use of color may limit universal appeal but image quality is immensely good.

 

vf's Al.loy Bezel. 127 icons. Multiple resolutions. XP only. Very detailed. 16x16 (detailed view) icons are a bit smudged (i.e. file types icons have labels as part of the icons but at 16x16 are no longer readable). Monochrome design may limit universality. But sparing use of color adds class as well.

 

Vladimir's Smile icon package. Roughly 100 unique icons in it. Outstanding design. Somewhat similar to the Toon-XP icons. Very well done, very friendly design.

Thunderstorm. 96 icons. Supports all versions of Windows. What particularly stands out on this is the quality of the actual elements (like the folders and such). Very  clear. Only downsides would be that it's monochrome which may limits its appeal and the icons are scaled to 16x16 (no switch over to pixel created 16x16 which means details view may look a bit smudgy when looking at file types).

There are others that we also found were very very good. We regret we didn't have more categories. We really liked DigitalChet's Novacons. We also liked Z71's Layout_IP but recognized that the color options on it may limit its appeal. Farid's HFN Sapphire was also really nice.

Somehow a mythology has grown over the years that there was this huge community of skinners and then "evil corporations" like Stardock swooped in and began cashing in.

That's not how it happened at all. Customization, as we know it, didn't spring up due to hobbiest developers. It largely sprung from the work of commercial software developers. Companies like Nullsoft, Neoplanet, and Stardock were there at the very start when skinning was obscure and the number of people into it were in the dozens.

Here's a time-line on full GUI skinning:

1994: Stardock begins customizing OS/2's GUI with new product, Object Desktop.
1995: Windows 95 released...
1996: Still no GUI customization programs for Windows.
1997: Stardock begins working on Object Desktop for Windows.

1998: Stardock puts out beta of GUI changer "WindowFX".
1998: Thirty4 Interactive releases competitor to WindowFX called eFX.
1998: Stardock teams up with Neil Banfield, renames WindowFX to WindowBlinds

1999: WindowBlinds 1.0 released.
1999: Top developers of customization software at this point: Nullsoft, Stardock, Neoplanet, Litestep.

Key points here - there was no Windows GUI skinning going on before. There are no patents, nothing stopping others from doing it. It's just a lot of work.

At the start of this, there is no community of any size. The software came first. I made the first Windows "skin" design. You can look at it here: Screenshot

The software came first. Made by very hard working developers who took a chance that a) this stuff could be even done (it wasn't obvious that this was possible at the time) and people would be interested in not just using it but paying $20 for it. WindowBlinds was $20 from day 1.

This is an important point: It's not like there was this hobbiest community of skinners making GUI skins for some mythological freeware skinning app and then evil Stardock jumps in and crushes the competition and starts milking skinners. WindowBlinds was the first GUI skinning program for Windows and it was always $20 to register. People made skins for it because it is fun. Making skins is fun for a lot of people (I've made lots myself).

When we started working on GUI skinning, 7 years ago, back before many of the more "righteous" skinners could drive a car, all we knew was that it was hard and that we had no idea if people would be interested. All we knew is that we thought it would be cool if you could change the look and feel of Windows.

The same people who bash WindowBlinds and talk how great msstyles ignore the fact that there'd very likely be no msstyles if there had been no WindowBlinds in the first place to demonstrate that yes, you could skin the Windows GUI via a system hook (which is exactly how uxtheme does it despite claims to the contrary).

It's taken 7 years of hard work to bring WindowBlinds to where it is today. It's a non-trivial amount of work. Especially for a program that is sold for the cost of a couple of pizzas.

The popularity of WindowBlinds, Winamp, Litestep, and IconPackager were the seeds that created the customization community. Anyone who's been around from the beginning can verify that.

From these 4 programs sprang many others such as Hoverdesk, CursorXP, Talisman, NextStart, DesktopX, ObjectBar. And in 2000 Microsoft got into the act with a skinnable Media Player and followed that up with Windows XP which expanded the customization community further.

But without WindowBlinds, Winamp, Litestep, and IconPackager I say it's doubtful there'd be a community as we know it today. There is nothing inevitable about changing the user interface of your computer. And there certainly was no obvious way to program it.

After all, Windows 95 had been out 4 years before WindowBlinds shipped. When development began, prevailing wisdom said it couldn't be done. Consider that: Win95 ships and nothing from any third parties for 3+ years. And yet look how much things changed in the 2 years AFTER WindowBlinds, IconPackager, Winamp, and Litestep got out there.

The software developers and the skin designers are part of a symbiotic relationship that is mutually beneficial. It riles me up when some skinner tries to treat us software developers like we're somehow parasites. It gets worse when someone makes false claims that we don't treat skinners with respect. I can't speak for how other companies treat skinners but I find it most ironic that anyone would argue that Stardock hasn't done a great deal to help skinners during the middle of the GUI Olympics

Customizing Windows XP didn't just start in a vacuum. It is the culmination of years of hard work and effort. The skinning community, from a software development point of view, wasn't some confderation of freeware hobbiests that got run over by commrecial developers. It was always led by commercial developers because desktop enhancement software is incredibly tedious to write and even more tedious to maintain over a long period of time.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents on the subject for what it's worth.

Somehow a mythology has grown over the years that there was this huge community of skinners and then "evil corporations" like Stardock swooped in and began cashing in.

That's not how it happened at all. Customization, as we know it, didn't spring up due to hobbiest developers. It largely sprung from the work of commercial software developers. Companies like Nullsoft, Neoplanet, and Stardock were there at the very start when skinning was obscure and the number of people into it were in the dozens.

Here's a time-line on full GUI skinning:

1994: Stardock begins customizing OS/2's GUI with new product, Object Desktop.
1995: Windows 95 released...
1996: Still no GUI customization programs for Windows.
1997: Stardock begins working on Object Desktop for Windows.

1998: Stardock puts out beta of GUI changer "WindowFX".
1998: Thirty4 Interactive releases competitor to WindowFX called eFX.
1998: Stardock teams up with Neil Banfield, renames WindowFX to WindowBlinds

1999: WindowBlinds 1.0 released.
1999: Top developers of customization software at this point: Nullsoft, Stardock, Neoplanet, Litestep.

Key points here - there was no Windows GUI skinning going on before. There are no patents, nothing stopping others from doing it. It's just a lot of work.

At the start of this, there is no community of any size. The software came first. I made the first Windows "skin" design. You can look at it here: Screenshot

The software came first. Made by very hard working developers who took a chance that a) this stuff could be even done (it wasn't obvious that this was possible at the time) and people would be interested in not just using it but paying $20 for it. WindowBlinds was $20 from day 1.

This is an important point: It's not like there was this hobbiest community of skinners making GUI skins for some mythological freeware skinning app and then evil Stardock jumps in and crushes the competition and starts milking skinners. WindowBlinds was the first GUI skinning program for Windows and it was always $20 to register. People made skins for it because it is fun. Making skins is fun for a lot of people (I've made lots myself).

When we started working on GUI skinning, 7 years ago, back before many of the more "righteous" skinners could drive a car, all we knew was that it was hard and that we had no idea if people would be interested. All we knew is that we thought it would be cool if you could change the look and feel of Windows.

The same people who bash WindowBlinds and talk how great msstyles ignore the fact that there'd very likely be no msstyles if there had been no WindowBlinds in the first place to demonstrate that yes, you could skin the Windows GUI via a system hook (which is exactly how uxtheme does it -- despite claims to the contrary).

It's taken 7 years of hard work to bring WindowBlinds to where it is today. It's a non-trivial amount of work. Especially for a program that is sold for the cost of a couple of pizzas.

The popularity of WindowBlinds, Winamp, Litestep, and IconPackager were the seeds that created the customization community. Anyone who's been around from the beginning can verify that.

From these 4 programs sprang many others such as Hoverdesk, CursorXP, Talisman, NextStart, DesktopX, ObjectBar. And in 2000 Microsoft got into the act with a skinnable Media Player and followed that up with Windows XP which expanded the customization community further.

But without WindowBlinds, Winamp, Litestep, and IconPackager I say it's doubtful there'd be a community as we know it today. There is nothing inevitable about changing the user interface of your computer. And there certainly was no obvious way to program it.

After all, Windows 95 had been out 4 years before WindowBlinds shipped. When development began, prevailing wisdom said it couldn't be done. Consider that: Win95 ships and nothing from any third parties for 3+ years. And yet look how much things changed in the 2 years AFTER WindowBlinds, IconPackager, Winamp, and Litestep got out there.

The software developers and the skin designers are part of a symbiotic relationship that is mutually beneficial. It riles me up when some skinner tries to treat us software developers like we're somehow parasites. It gets worse when someone makes false claims that we don't treat skinners with respect. I can't speak for how other companies treat skinners but I find it most ironic that anyone would argue that Stardock hasn't done a great deal to help skinners during the middle of the GUI Olympics

Customizing Windows XP didn't just start in a vacuum. It is the culmination of years of hard work and effort. The skinning community, from a software development point of view, wasn't some confderation of freeware hobbiests that got run over by commrecial developers. It was always led by commercial developers because desktop enhancement software is incredibly tedious to write and even more tedious to maintain over a long period of time.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents on the subject for what it's worth.

The results are now up for the BEST OVERALL Winamp skin of the 2004 GUI Olympics! Check them out!

	Author	Skin	Shot	Notes
	kriptoner	D-Reliction		Outstanding coding combined with excellent graphics put this in the running along with a high level of usability
	883	Enkera		One of the most original and unique designs of the contest combined with lots of color options, and terrific design.
	VAG - METASKINS	Metaskins.net - WooHoo-FER		Outstanding coding and well crafted graphics along with both a "cool looking" and well done usability version.
4th	Andrew Mackowski	EMP 2		Very high usability with lots of different color options. Scripting not as sophisticated but outstanding aesthetics make up for that.
5th	Muniom Designs	Resurgence		Really good coding, good usability with lots of color options make this one of the tops.

Which Winamp skin do you think is the best overall? Which WindowBlinds visual style do you think is tops? Which icon package do you think is better than all the rest? Now WinCustomize subscribers can vote for their favorite entries!

If you're not a WinCustomize subscriber, you can go here to become one. WinCustomize subscriptions are what have paid for the IT work and bandwidth for this contest. It also helps us avoid "ballot stuffing" to get a more accurate idea of the user favorites.

To subscribe to WinCustomize: WinCustomize Store To Vote: User Choice Voting Booth

Popular msstyle author, Bant, has taken his ball and gone home. Seems he's unhappy with the customization community.  In particular, he says that TGT Soft and Stardock are a disgrace to the skinning community.

You can read what he wrote here:

http://bant.deviantart.com/journal/2601098/

Bant is the creator of about a half dozen very good msstyles and 1 very good WindowBlinds skin.

Here's my response:

That's odd, I remember back in 1997 when we were designing what would become WindowBlinds and I just can't remember seeing anyone called "Bant".
 
 I remember when the first customization site, Customize.org got started, I don't recall seeing you there. And as the person who made the first skin that skinned the Windows GUI, I tend to think that this CEO of the "disgraceful" Stardock might have contributed something to the customization community.
 
 Now, in the 7 years we've spent working on WindowBlinds, which we provide a free unlimited downloadable version of that works on Windows 95 through Windows XP, I really have a hard time seeing how Stardock is somehow a "disgrace" to the customization community. I see Stardock as a group of people who have spent many many years working very hard to make it easy for people to customize Windows. Before Stardock came along, there was no Windows customization as we know it today. Feel free to go on archive.org and look back as far as you can at customize.org and you'll see what I mean.
 
 And of the software that we don't outright give away as freeware we sell for between $8 and $20 apiece Or about the price of a couple of pizzas.
 
 I also have a hard time seeing how Stardock is a "disgrace" when it put together the GUI Olympics, a contest in which skinners will make up to $15,000 in it.
 
 Or how about the freeware Stardock makes? BootSkin, ObjectDock, CursorXP, LogonStudio, and so on. Who makes more FREE customization software than we do that is anywhere near as widely used? We also pay for a website with no spyware, no popup ads that also supports our competitors. Hell, we host Samurize.com!
 
 Do you think the "customization" community as you know it just sprung up randomly? If it was so obvious, why did it take WindowBlinds to get GUI skinning going (eFX came later). Why weren't there IconPackager-like programs before IconPackager (iconphile and e-icons came later). There's still no CursorXP equivalent. There's still nothing quite like DesktopX, which, btw, is a free download and uncrippled. There's no WindowFX equivalent (beyond a few programs that add a few shadows).
 
 Stardock has worked very hard to contribute quite a bit to the customization community. It creates a ton of freeware programs and its non-freeware programs are priced trivially.
 
 And Stardock, as a group, participates actively in the community (such as me here and on Neowin and dozens of other websites).
 
 There are also skin authors now who are able to make a living creating skins.
 
 But more to the point, the skins didn't come first, the software did. The software is there for fun. People (like me) make skins because we enjoy doing it. Just like they make levels for Counterstrike or maps for Warcraft III or mods for Neverwinternights. Most people don't sweat that some developer might make money on it. It's supposed to be for fun.
 
 I'm sorry to see you go, I think you have a lot of potential as a skinner. But I take issue with you saying Stardock is a "disgrace".